Video games can actually add a lot of value to your life, but some days you really just want to fire one up and destroy all your friends—by any means necessary. Here's how to cheat at online video games.

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Obviously, cheating is bad. In fact, cheating at an online video game can often get you banned and your account closed, not to mention it's just plain annoying. But, if you're just playing against your friends and want to pull a harmless prank, or are sick of leveling your WoW character and want to get it done quickly, cheating can start to look at bit more appealing. There are more games and cheats out there than we could ever cover in one article, but here, we'll give you three examples—from three of the most popular online games—of how you can manipulate files, use programs, or write simple scripts to give yourself an unfair advantage.

Note: Perform these and other cheats at your own risk. Most online games have anti-cheat software running on their servers, which can detect many cheats and get you banned and your accounts closed. Never cheat on an account you can't live without, and if you have a choice, avoid anti-cheat servers to minimize the possibility of getting caught. You have been warned.

Make Walls Invisible in Counter Strike: Source

Counter-Strike: Source isn't the newest game around, but it's still an incredibly popular game among LAN parties and online via Steam. One of the more popular hacks for Counter-Strike: Source isn't so much a hack as it is a texture pack: by overwriting some of the game's files, you can turn all the walls invisible, giving you a leg up on finding your enemies before they find you.

To perform this hack, just download the files here and paste them in your Counter-Strike: Source folder (usually in C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\yourusername\counter-strike source\cstrike. That's it. When you restart the game, you should see that walls are invisible and fighting terrorists is easier than taking candy from a baby. And, since you're just replacing files on your system, it's much more unlikely that any chat system will detect you, which is a nice plus. Check out the video above to see it (and a few other hacks) in action, and hit the link below to read more.

Automatically Level Up Your Character in World of Warcraft

Some games, like World of Warcraft, are popular enough that they have whole programs dedicated to cheating. One such program is Lazybot, a program that controls your character for you and levels you up while you go off and do other things. Its main purpose is pretty simple: it runs around, detects enemies, and fights them for you, gaining you experience while you leave the game minimized. It can also build up your fishing skill, automatically send chat messages back to those that contact you, and even give you a glance at your radar to make sure you don't get stuck somewhere. It's actually a very full-featured program, and while it's a little riskier to use, it can certainly take the pain out of hours of grinding. Check out the video above to see a quick walkthrough of everything the program can do.

Rapid Fire Weapons in Modern Warfare 2

The third way to cheat at games is to create simple macros that perform actions faster or better than you can with human fingers. "Rapid fire" scripts, for example, are very common in first-person shooter games like Modern Warfare 2. With a simple script, you can tell your computer to perform mouse clicks at a very fast speed, letting you fire off more bullets than you could normally do by clicking the mouse.

When the script is running, pressing the Home button enables the macro (as long as Modern Warfare 2 is the active window). Once you've enabled the macro, you can click the mouse button to fire as normal, but it will fire off bullets in much more rapid bursts, even if you're using a gun that isn't rapid fire.

Going Further

These are just a few simple examples from popular games, but you can adapt these same types of cheats to a ton of other games out there, and have the perform all sorts of other actions. If you want to see more, the best place to find cheats like this is on forums like Multiplayer Game Hacking, Ownedcore (for MMOs), or just searching Google for your specific game. You're bound to stumble upon a treasure trove of different cheats, tricks, and hacks for getting a leg up on your competitors. As we mentioned before, though, proceed with caution—not only is it not very nice, but it could get you banned from your favorite game, so don't do anything you'll regret.

This post is part of our Evil Week series at Lifehacker, where we look at the dark side of getting things done. Knowing evil means knowing how to beat it, so you can use your sinister powers for good. Want more? Check out our evil week tag page.